Thursday, February 15, 2018

CCDD 021518 - Mechanic "Improvements" and Monocolor Draft

I've been contemplating the problem of mono-color archetypes in draft. The biggest issue is that roughly 20% of a pack will be of that color/usable in your deck, whereas if you're drafting two colors your card selection increases to 40%. Incentivizing at least some of the people sitting around the table to draft mono is a tricky thing for a designer to do.

The two basic means to overcome this are to either push more artifacts, or to include Hybrid. Neither of those options really work for the project I'm working on. Hybrid especially sends cross-signals to one of the main themes of the set.

Tuesday's discussion of non-transforming DFCs presents a nice solution to the problem. In essence, by removing the transformation option from DFCs, we add an extra card to the pack. A pack with a card that's Red on one side and Green on the other, and will only ever see one mode on the battlefield, can be drafted and used freely by any player in either of those colors. It becomes, in essence, the split-card permanent that rules managers cringe at.

When I proposed this question this morning on Twitter, Pasteur threw in Morph as a suggestion for a means to increase available picks in a pack bereft of cards of your chosen color. Morph honestly has no place in the set, but what if it was just the boring half of Morph?

These are playable in any deck, but better (obviously) in their mono-color deck.

The biggest problem I have with these half-mechanics is that transform and morphing are what make those mechanics great, and these halves focus on the more dull aspects. They're highly utilitarian in what they're doing for the set, but using the unexciting halves of popular mechanics probably isn't the best place to start from.

34 comments:

I feel like split creature double faced cards would create the same incentives as regular split cards to try and be able to cast either half. The Two Face card above really wants a RG deck where it can be played as an on curve 2 if you have it and a 4 Mana haste if you top deck it late.

The anonymous creatures are also going to feel bad ever playing them face down. I'd rather use 2-brid mana or maybe Colorless hybrid (<>/C) Mana to make them generically playable without taking away their mono-colored nature. In my ideal Battle for Zendikar remake, I would have used two-brid Mana in the first set to show the devoid Eldrazi and colorless hybrid in the second, but it depends on your set.

Other options exist more in the custom cube realm: larger pack sizes, penalties against playing multiple colors.

Five things to incentivize mono-colored:1. Use Devotion.2. Have prohibitive mana costs 3 red, double red, etc.3. Have abilities scale off of number of particular basic land you control.4. Make cards like the Paragons from M15.5. Reference color.Not sure if any of these goes for what you want and really is more just draft this color.

I think one of the major problems to solve (aside from pushing up monocolor asfan) is dealing with getting cut in limited. In a standard set if the player on your right/left cuts one of your colors, you can still salvage half your cards. If you get cut drafting monoblue halfway through a set that heavily incentivizes monocolor drafting, you're in deep trouble unless you can still salvage a portion of your cards. Whatever solution you work out needs to deal with that problem.

This seems like the biggest problem to me. As said by another poster, even a solution like the DFC with different colors as suggested, if they're different, it may just encourage a multicolor deck that can play one side early and the other late like a kicker card (I actually had a mechanical or logistical issue with dfc you can cast on either side, but I forget what it was. Flavorfully, it feels like a frankly kinda lame use of the mechanic as suggested in the OP. The strength of DFCs is they're like little stories. I guess you could flavor it in some way but as put forth in the OP with no flavor I dont find it compelling). Maybe playtesting would reveal otherwise, but its gonna really need to be actualy drafted I think. I think, however, that if it is the best option, that I dont think it taked the cool part away from DFCs. The appeal to them before has been that they transform, but the thing here is thst thr cool part is just different rather than gone entirely. The cool part ia being a split permanent. So if you feel like it isnt splashy or cool anymore and it's putting you off, don't feel that way. Its still cool, just for a different reason. I do think it's true for your halfmorph though.

This is an interesting challenge but I havent quite solidified a suggestion for a solution yet. It really feels like hybrid is the answer to me. Its kind of like the DFC split cards, except theres no worry that two color decks will use them like kicker cards since theyll always be at the same point on the curve. What's the reason hybrid isnt an option exavtly, if you can say?

It may also be helpful to know how you plan to reward monocolor, especially if it isnt the set's primary draft structure and is just a subtheme. Different rewards could use different solutions. At first thought to me it seems the easiest reward to most guarantee monocolor would be rewarding basic land types, or devotion though devotion is a big flavor ask and I dont exactly know how deep its design space is.

Rather than losing out if you didn't, the wording is you get a bonus if you did, which I think reads better. My issue with this is remembering between turns that you did it. After a few turns and a few more unwavering cards get cast, players may forget that you did cast it with unwavering. You COULD use dfc to do this (Unwavering - If you cast with only X mana, it etbs transformed), though I dont think you could use it for spells anymore which kind of sucks.

Actually, I guess if Unwavering is an ability word which I tgink it has to unless theres a way to template it the same dor all colors, the ability word on permanents could be used on permanents to mean transform it, and just list your bonus on spells. Somsthing feels off about that to me though. Is it weird that you can do anything with spells, but permanents would have to transform to mitigate tracking?

Seems like the set wants a small colorless/artifact theme or some two-brid to make the mono-color drafting work. Basically, it needs some 'safe' picks that can fill the 20th-23rd spot in a draft deck and used to stay open early.

Taking a step back, I'm not quite sure it's a problem that's worth solving. It almost narrows down the draft portion to "find an open color". After that, you're just basically picking the strongest card in your color every pick. It would be like you're drafting mono red in cube over and over - just picking the red card out of every pack and hoping nobody else is doing the same.

I never thought of it this way. I actually think it could still work if the mono colors were deep enough and had high enough asfan/artifacts to care about different things (for example, a set that supported a monored spells deck and a monored artifact deck or a monored tokens deck to manipulation evaluatiob of individual monored cards), but I have no idea if the logistics works out and I think you'd have to dedicate a lot of space to it.

It also may still be possible as a minor buildaround as just a thing you can do sometimes in larger draft environment, but I got the impression it was a bigger theme than that based on the desire for a mechanic or tool in set to support it.

It depends on how many options you have in the pack: https://goblinartisans.blogspot.com/2016/10/bouillon-cubes.html?m=1

You can push mono-color if you're willing to increase the number of viable choices. That's why Shadowmoor kinda worked, although there wasn't really enough synergies to make distinct archtypes with colors. Soupy cubes fix this by cutting fixing slots for more niche cards and archtypes.

interestingly colourless cycling can help by reducing the burden from 23 to 22ish non land playables.

This is not a suggestion for every set but assuming there exists rewards for mono colour then some conspiracy style mechanics can help players navigate into different colours but could also do some cool things like

Ready to please 1KInstantas you draft ready to please choose a colour, K is that colourtarget creature gets (K):W or U: +2/+1 and flyingB: -1/-2R or G: +3/+1 and trample

or forget the drafting

Ready to please 1KInstantK may be that colourtarget creature gets (K):W or U: +2/+1 and flyingB: -1/-2R or G: +3/+1 and trample

Traitor to all 2KCreature- Human (Common)W: lifelink vigelanceU: FlyingB: deathouchR: hasteG: Traitor to all enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter2/2

they both have multiple lines so what is they only had some option

Man of three paths 2KKCreature HumanK may be payed with W, B or RW: Flying B: When ~ enters the battlefield target opponent discards a card.R: Haste, Trample3/3

yes this is a bit hybrid but has pros and cons compared to the "if X was spent to cast ~..." text

Is there any way of playing up "really really green" by using hybrid or artifact instead of fighting against them? E.g. mediocre creatures that have a MM or MMM cost ability in two colours? Or that key off having multiple G or R colours?

The abortive multiverse community set played with single-colour archetypes, but I was never completely happy with it. The problem was, if you draft you're usually going to be compromising between things. If you usually draft two-colour, you have ten potential choices. If you draft mono-colour, you only have five. We tried to alleviate that by aiming for a choice between monocolour (with strong rewards) or colour-plus-splash or two colour, but it never really worked.

I'm not sure how that's going to work for you? Do you envisage having two different G archetypes? Or something else? Card that could go in multiple colours but require a commitment to whichever one you use could help with that, if different players can choose different sets of those cards that enable different archetypes.

E.g. an ability which says "pay three mana of any one colour to activate this ability", so you can use it in any deck, but only any most monocolour deck. But there might be go-big ones, and go-wide ones, and others, so you can draft "G go-big" or "G go-wide" or "G/W, not really any of those special cards" or "G go-big/go-wide compromise" etc

I fully second the criticism on the proposed solutions made by Wobbles.The quasi-morph solution also seems to me to put player's attention onto a part of your design you don't want focus on.You're looking for a work-horse mechanic that plays well and it's very simple and easy to grok.For example, as others have said, you can go with 2-brid.

Another mechanic that could work is Alternate Mana Costs, like the Bringer of the Black Dawn cycle, but with colorless creatures that can be cast more efficiently with heavy mono color commitment, or vice-versa. Something like:

There may be reasons we can't ever make DFCs where you can play either side of the card. If so, that restriction actually makes Two-Faced Barbarbian/Monk viable, because you have to choose which side is the front side and thus the only castable side when you build your deck (and when you sideboard).

That would definitely solve the issue of the version in the OP just being used as a kicker spell. I also think assigning flavor is gonna be very tricky for this, especially without comissioned art to more easily tie sides together, but that problem can be solved later. The question, then, becomes how do you determine which side is chosen? How does it work in constructed? Do you get to choose a side whenever you register a deck list or whenever you start a game, or is it determined in some way permanently? I may be ovethinking it and there's a simple solution. Just saying it at the start of a game/match doesn't really work I don't think.

Does that mean you can switch between games? Is that much different than the current version where you can play just one side at a time anyway? It might change whether it was drawn early or late, but that seems like the good part of this idea, even if it doesnt meet the goal here. Do all your cards have to be the same mode? Is it still fun to have to choose one side or the other and be locked in the whole game? How would people know you have to pick and play only one side? Is it presented in a different way that makes that very clear? This also feels strange to me because I thought most people played dfcs without the checklist since most people play with opaque sleeves. Is the checklist mandatory now if thats the way to go? Does that mean it has to list front and back for all the cards, and how many cards does that mean there can be?

There's already a mechanic where you have to choose which card you're going to play in you deck before the game starts: deck building. Sense the two halves don't have in game connection, there's little gain with not just making it into two separate cards. If you're trying to inject extra cards in a pack, just include extra cards (20 card packs, say).

If the two cards are mechanically connected, you should collate packs so they appear together. I suspect that they may do something along those lines for the Battleborn 2HG set (buddy cards).

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